Planning for Elden Ring

 So, Elden Ring is (I presume) sitting there, downloaded to my PS4. I haven't had a chance to play it (yesterday was bonkers for reasons that aren't relevant to this blog) but I have been itching to do so.

In the past, I've always come to Soulsborne games long after their initial release. Given the difficulty and obscurity of these games, I've tended to feel zero qualms about looking up guides, planning out for specific items and weapons, and making sure I find all the proper NPCs and questlines.

For Elden Ring, I think... I think I'm going to try going in relatively blind. At this point, the game's community hasn't had that much time to go over it with a fine-tooth comb, so this is going to be sort of enforced anyway.

I will say this: I have areas of interest.

First off, in my return to Dark Souls III last year, I finally committed to a spellcaster build, and found that it was actually quite fun and effective (likewise a hybrid Strength/Faith "paladin" build). Elden Ring is a new world with totally new lore, and I think the aspect of it that interests me the most is the "cosmic" element, with Sorcery related to the stars and gravitational magic.

So, first time out, I think I'm going to try to play an intelligence (if that's still the stat) spellcaster. I'm glad to see that weapon scaling looks like it can be swapped out freely and early, which will be very useful for an intelligence build (granted DS3 had the Deep Greataxe you could find early on, which did dark damage with no scaling, and thus was a great option for basically anyone, so maybe there's a similar "one-size-fits-all" weapon that you can get early in Elden Ring.)

One thing I'm really happy to see is that the world of Elden Ring seems a lot more colorful than that of Dark Souls or even Bloodborne. The bleak grey of those games works great for their tone, but visually it can get a little... monotonous. Elden Ring seems to still have that sense of cataclysmic ruin, but with a bit more going on color-wise.

I'm really excited to dig into this. Hopefully I'll be able to do so later today.

9.2: Eternity's End, and Shadowlands' Eventual Legacy

 New patch today!

The servers are down, as is often the case when there's a new patch that needs extra love and care, but let's talk 9.2.

Shadowlands, as an expansion, feels like the ultimate mixed bag. I think it will draw comparisons with Warlords of Draenor, which I contend is WoW's nadir in terms of quality. What is shocking about that is that Shadowlands was supposed to be the Legion-like shot in the arm after the disappointments of Battle for Azeroth (which was never as bad as Warlords, but still had a lot of problems).

I never had huge hopes for Warlords of Draenor. The premise was so profoundly convoluted that it barely made any sense, and the very things that it might have been able to play around with - namely time-travel - were brushed to the side to make the Iron Horde a generically "physical" threat.

For years, Blizzard had talked about how they wished they could have an annual release schedule for World of Warcraft expansions. This was a big trend in video games, such as with the Assassin's Creed games, but which proved to sacrifice quality to quantity. Warlords, thus, was planned to only have one major patch after the first one (as far as I know,) but when Blizzard was unable to actually get the job done that quickly, we just had Warlords languish over a long period of time with nothing new to do. Indeed, by the time Legion was announced at Gamescom in 2015, the audience seemed profoundly skeptical (though to be fair, they were also German, and maybe not as emotive as American audiences are) toward what I personally think is WoW's best expansion.

Shadowlands, though, had a different reason to run into trouble: Covid. And then another reason: the legal fallout of the California lawsuit.

Now, for the record, there's nothing I want more for Blizzard as a company than to genuinely evolve, getting its workers unionized and truly dismantling the culture of harassment and abuse. And if that means sacrificing the quality of a WoW expansion - whether that actually makes sense or not - I think it's worth it. Sadly, I'm not super optimistic - Activision Blizzard's acquisition by Microsoft might mean getting rid of a slimeball like Bobby Kotick, but being part of an even larger megacorporation has never been particularly helpful to empowering workers to organize. Not much more I have to say about that.

Now, tastes vary, and some people really prefer their fantasy grounded and "realistic," set in a world that mostly functions like our own, just with magic and monsters. But I like the headier, weirder stuff, and I felt that Shadowlands had the potential to be essentially World of Warcraft's take on Planescape.

Sure, I think we can all agree that the Jailer sucks as a bad guy. He's generic and boring, and falls into some familiar patterns with Blizzard's WoW villains. And I do think that Shadowlands has not done a sufficient job in tying its new cosmic lore into the existing lore (unlike in Mists of Pandaria, where a bunch of new elements turned out to be part of the Titan and Old God lore).

But I think that Shadowlands launched very successfully, and the expansion had the makings of one of the bests when it first came out. Its biggest sin has been a lack of content, which has been only partially under Blizzard's control.

9.1, also, to be fair, was a pretty substantial patch for a 9.1. Normally, we wouldn't get something like Korthia until 9.2, and 9.1 would have just been the big raid and some new stuff in familiar zones (like the Maw Assaults). I've seen the argument that 9.1 sort of squeezed a 9.2 in with it (though minus a "mid tier" raid,) but in any case, it was clearly not intended to give us a whole year of content.

So, we're now getting the final patch of this expansion. I've heard very good things about it, and I think Blizzard's evolving philosophy on listening to players' feedback could potentially mean really great things for the game. But this patch also need to put the bow on an expansion that is arguably a bigger disappointment because the expectations were set so high.

A decade ago (well, nine years ago,) I had a series of posts that were a "Mists of Pandaria Retrospective," which I made before the final patch came out. In retrospect, it was a bit premature to write about the expansion's legacy before it was complete. Thus, I'll refrain from saying what I think Shadowlands' will be.

Still, I always worry that Blizzard will learn the wrong lessons from the successes and failures. For instance, I think that the success of Artifact Weapons in Legion led them to erroneously believe that every expansion needed some borrowed-power grind, when the thing that actually made them cool was the sense of lore and a bond with a weapon that had personality, and the aesthetic (it was cool to see them design various versions all themed around the same visual motifs).

I think Covenants were a lot of fun, but I wish that there was less of a mechanical incentive to pick one or the other. Almost all my characters wound up going Night Fae or Venthyr simply because their main specs did better with those covenants. My hope is that Blizzard will err on the side of making these sort of choices less mechanically-focused.

Anyway, having avoided the PTR and only glimpsed some of the discussion about the new patch, I'm eager to go in fresh-faced. Also, I never ran Tazzavesh, so being able to just queue for the heroic version will be nice.

Oh, I Guess I Can Get Elden Ring When It Comes Out

 When The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out, I was somewhat hesitant to get it. I had a Wii U, probably the least successful Nintendo hardware product since the Virtual Boy, and the game had been originally announced for that platform, but it became a big selling point for the new, far more successful and popular Switch.

Still, I was hesitant to get a Switch without knowing whether the library for that console would be good enough. So I got Breath of the Wild on the Wii U.

Now, I felt it was just ok (I'm sort of blown away by the degree to which so many people are in love with the game, as I think it inherited a lot of the least appealing aspects of "open world" game design while jettisoning much of what I love about Zelda game,) but then I did get a Switch, and I feel like maybe it would have been nicer if I had waited and been able to play it on, say, an airplane - or just not having to hold the massive Wii U tablet controller.

I've been having the same ambivalence about getting Elden Ring - I've been a big fan of From Soft games (though of the three Soulsborne I have I only actually beat Bloodborne) but I feel like I'd rather play it on the more powerful Playstation 5.

But... A: it's not super cheap, and B: even over a year after the PS5's release, actually getting one is apparently still a challenge. (Granted, I haven't been searching that hard).

However, I realized something I should have realized a while ago: if I buy it for my PS4, in this day and age, I can just download it to my PS5 if and when I get the console.

I checked the Sony online store and yep, you can just buy the "PS4 and PS5" version for 60 bucks. I've tended to just buy my games digitally these days (the libraries of my Switch and PS4 both look a lot smaller than they are if you only look at the bookshelf) so I think this is probably the way to go (might need to clear some of that space, but there are plenty of games I have downloaded that I don't play super often anyway).

Anyway, this makes me excited, as I'll probably be popping into the Lands Between by week's end.

This is, of course, another case of a game adapting to the "open world" genre, but from what I've seen of it, Elden Ring looks like it's retaining that tight From Soft design, and given how punishing these games are, it might be nice to have a very wide range of options on where to progress.

Napkin Math: Another Crack at Firearms - Dropped Modifiers

 In Starfinder, there are plenty of ranged weapons - you can have various kinds of laser guns, sonic weapons, conventional firearms, etc. Damage scaling in that game works very differently than in D&D, but while melee weapons do include your Strength modifier in the damage (even if that damage is something like fire from what is essentially an axe whose blade is made of burning plasma) you don't add your Dexterity modifier to ranged weapon attacks - it's just the flat roll of the dice (admittedly, everyone also gets a feat that allows them to add their level to the damage of weapons they're supposed to be using - again, the damage scaling is very different in that game).

Anyway, in my ongoing quest to make Firearms in D&D balanced, I wondered a bit about exploring this as an option.

I found that introducing Misfires was a reasonable balance for Renaissance-era weapons (even making a Musket less powerful overall than a Heavy Crossbow) but that even if you make the weapon misfire on any natural roll equal to the number of dice your roll, Modern and Futuristic weapons still pull ahead because the damage potential is so high (this might be why Matt Mercer's Gunslinger doesn't just prevent you from firing more that round, but forces you to attempt a repair mid-battle).

But what I want to explore here is whether you could remove the Dexterity bonus to damage and make these weapons more balanced.

Here, I think Renaissance weapons will naturally fall behind - if Misfire was making Muskets less powerful than a Heavy Crossbow, the lack of any Dex modifier to damage would be an obvious problem - 1d8 (a longbow) + 3 is 7.5 on average, which is more than 1d12's average of 6.5 (a musket,) and the floor on that longbow is 4, as opposed to 1.

When we get up to modern weapons, though, the math begins to change a bit.

An automatic pistol hits for 2d6. If we compare that to a Hand Crossbow (another pretty standard one-handed ranged weapon,) that does 1d6+Dex. Depending on your Dexterity modifier, the average damage will be different. At +5, of course, the Hand Crossbow is averaging 8.5, compared to the Automatic Pistol's flat 7. Granted, the Hand Crossbow's crit is 12, while an Automatic Pistol's crit is 14.

If we move up to two-handed weapons, a Heavy Crossbow is doing 1d10+Dex, so with maxed Dex we get about 10.5 damage on average. A Hunting Rifle? 2d10, or about 11. That's pretty close, actually. The Hunting Rifle will do a lot more on a crit (4d10, or 22, versus 2d10+5, or 16) but the floor on the Heavy Crossbow is 6, compared to the Hunting Rifle's floor of 2.

So, how's this for a proposal? First, let's just get rid of Renaissance Firearms, as they don't really fit into this paradigm. We're going to look at Modern weapons only (which includes some Western-appropriate options like Shotguns and Revolvers). Essentially, the price you're paying for getting a gun is that you're not adding your Dex modifier, giving you swingier weapons with still fairly comparable overall damage output (you can think of the second die as replacing the Dex modifier).

I'm going to be a little masochistic and do this for all the options (though weapons the same damage die will be identical).

Without Misfire altering the chance to hit multiple times, we're only now looking at damage per attack - not per round. Because critting is important here, we're going to use a "target dummy" with an AC of 18, and we're going to assume a +9 to hit, as someone who has a +5 to Dexterity and a PB of 4 - around the mid levels. (This of course doesn't account for the Archery fighting style, but with Rogues, Artificers, and potentially others, I'm ok with that).

Miss 1-8 (40%) Hit 9-19 (55%) Crit 20 (5%)

    1d6 (Shortbows, Hand Crossbows)

Hit Damage: 1d6+5, or 8.5

Crit Damage: 2d6+5, or 12

Damage Per Attack: 4.675 + 0.6, or 5.275

    2d6 Firearms (Automatic Pistol)

Hit Damage: 2d6, or 7

Crit Damage: 4d6, or 14

Damage Per Attack: 3.85 + 0.7, or 4.55

So, here things do favor the traditional weapons a bit, but the average difference is less than 1 point of damage, which I think is close to the margin of error. Let's look at bigger weapons.

    1d8 Traditional Weapons (Light Crossbows, Longbows)

Hit Damage: 1d8+5, or 9.5

Crit Damage: 2d8+5, or 14

Damage Per Attack: 5.225 + 0.7, or 5.925

    2d8 Firearms (Revolvers, Automatic Rifles, Shotguns)

Hit Damage: 2d8, or 9

Crit Damage: 4d8, or 18

Damage Per Attack: 4.95 + 0.9, or 5.85

Here, the gap has closed to less than .1 damage per round, and still favors traditional weapons.

    1d10 Traditional Weapons (Heavy Crossbow)

Hit Damage: 1d10+5, or 10.5

Crit Damage: 2d10+5, or 16

Damage Per Attack: 5.775 + 0.8, or 6.575

    2d10 Firearms (Hunting Rifle)

Hit Damage: 2d10, or 11

Crit Damage: 4d10, or 22

Damage Per Attack: 6.05 + 1.1, or 7.15

    At this point, the firearm has pulled ahead. But again, it's less than 1 average point higher.

    Is this it? Have we cracked it? One thing to note is that against higher AC monsters, the firearms fare better given the greater relevance of critical hits, but that's actually quite historically accurate (firearms were popularized because they punched through armor).

I think this system might create a sense of balance - players willing to tolerate more swing in their damage numbers can go for firearms while those who want more consistency will go for traditional ranged weapons. Neither becomes that much more powerful than the other. Ostensibly, a character with lower Dexterity might prefer a firearm, as while the chance to hit will be the same, they won't be penalized as much for low Dex - but that also reflects the historical fact that guns became more popular as weapons because they required less skill to use (especially post-industrial-revolution ones).

I have to say, I'm really happy with this solution, and might implement it in future games (not my current campaign given that I'm keeping MTG's gun ban - except for cannons on Ixalan, but no hand-carried guns). Was it really this simple?

Naturally, as I said before, AC is going to factor in, but a 55% hit chance feels like a fairly reasonable average. Magical weapons will naturally provide firearms with more stable floors, too, but still not quite as much as traditional ranged weapons.

Looking at the Greatwyrms

 We just looked at the CR 30 monsters from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, the Aspects of the two major dragon gods, Bahamut and Tiamat. These are the only stat blocks aside from the adventure NPC stats for Tiamat (not just her aspect) in Rise of Tiamat to match the Tarrasque at this highest of challenge ratings. I looked at how their damage output is not absurdly high (though they're no slouches) and how, instead, their major challenge comes from likely being able to endure several rounds of punishment from a high-level party.

If high-level D&D is rocket tag, the Aspects have a pretty sophisticated missile-defense system, so the strategy of just taking out the boss as quickly as possible won't necessarily work.

These aren't the only super-high CR monsters out of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. The other is the Greatwyrm. Fizban's revealed that dragons on each world of the prime material plane are sort of one iteration or incarnation of a fractured draconic soul. Dragons who can bind to their counterparts across the myriad worlds (whether through cooperation or conquest) can become super-powerful, transforming into something called a Greatwyrm, which (in theory) is more powerful than even an ancient dragon. (Yes, this is more or less the plot of the 2001 Jet Li film The One.) 

The book provides us with stat blocks for three broad archetypes - the Metallic, Chromatic, and Gem Greatwyrms. Each essentially has a couple of variables when it comes to damage types, but beyond that the stats are identical to their branch of dragonkind. Metallic Greatwyrms are CR 28. Chromatic ones are 27, and Gem ones are 26.

This does have a few interesting consequences. For example, a Blue Greatwyrm's breath will be a cone rather than its usual line, and likewise a Green Greatwyrm's breath calls for a Dexterity saving throw rather than a Constitution one. I think DMs would be justified in altering these, though I'd personally, at least in the case of the Blue one, treat it as a massive cone-shaped barrage of lightning, or forked lightning.

I do find it interesting that the three are different CRs - as I said when looking at the two Aspects, I think Bahamut has the potential to be a far tougher fight than Tiamat given his ability to pump out insane amounts of healing (though only if he has allies - otherwise Tiamat has the clear edge). Metallic Dragons tend toward goodness, though Fizban's made it clear that as beings of the Prime Material Plane (indeed, the ones most tied to that plane, even more than us humanoids) Dragons are beings of free will, and there are suggested personality traits that can make for evil-aligned Gold dragons or good-aligned Black dragons. Thus, there's nothing preventing the party from having a Metallic Greatwyrm as their big bad.

Still, one would hope that CR 27 or 26 would make for satisfyingly challenging final bosses. Let's take a look at all of them.

Metallic Greatwyrms:

First off, I want to look at defenses. Metallics get a base HP of 565 and are, like the Aspects, Mythic monsters that reset to 450 HP when you get to "phase 2," which means that they have effectively 1015 HP - honestly not much behind the Aspects. And, indeed, they don't have a single saving throw bonus that's below double digits - ranging from a +10 to Strength (no proficiency) to +18 to Charisma saves. Their AC is 22, though, which for a high-level threat is not terribly hard to hit.

They do have fewer condition immunities than the Aspects, though they still have 4 legendary resistances (compared to the Aspects' 5) which also reset when they go Mythic.

I think by far the biggest reduction in defense is the lack of so many damage immunities. Because Bahamut and Tiamat are immune to every kind of damage their type of dragon can have immunity to (with Bahamut getting Radiant instead of Poison) that seriously reduces the sort of harm that any spellcasters can bring to them. Greatwyrms only have their color/metal/gem's specific damage immunity, so even nonmagical weapons can hurt them. A Silver Greatwyrm will be subject to your Chain Lightnings, your Firestorms, or even your Summon Elemental's Air Spirit's slam attacks.

Movement-wise, they all inherit the movement speeds of the rest of their dragon type - so even though a Silver dragon doesn't have a swim or burrow speed, they get this (which might just be because they decided to use a single stat block for all metallic dragons).

On the offense, their multiattack is limited to just two attacks (the Aspects get Bite, Claw, and Tail, while the Greatwyrms get just Bite and Claw, saving their tail attack for either legendary actions or opportunity attacks). Thus, when they don't have their breath weapon, they're putting out about 53 damage per round, with a +18 to hit. The hit bonus is only slightly behind the Aspects, and only very rarely will miss, but the lack of that third attack does significantly lower their damage.

Metallics get two breath attacks, as is typical. The Elemental Breath is your standard one, and requires a DC 25 Dex save against 84 (on average) damage. 25 is... a little more doable, but still means an auto-fail for anyone without proficiency in Dexterity that doesn't have it maxed out (and if you don't have proficiency, you probably don't have it maxed out). Indeed, that 84 is actually more damage than the Aspects do.

The other breath is Sapping Breath, which requires a DC 25 Con save or the creature goes unconscious for 1 minute, but even on a success, the creature gets disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws until the end of the dragon's next turn. So, that's a pretty big deal, and can put several members of the party down. Again, without buffs, if you aren't a class with Constitution saving throw proficiency or maxed out Con, you're an auto-fail, which is pretty nuts. Of course, things like Bless or a Paladin's Aura of Protection can significantly help here.

I have to imagine than any Metallic Dragon is going to start things off with their Sapping Breath, which could potentially knock out most of if not the entire party on the first round. Even a Barbarian with +7 to Constitution, and thus a +13 to Con saves, is more likely than not to fail that. Unconscious creatures do get to repeat the save at the end of their turns, but again, it's a hard one to hit - and it doesn't break on damage, so if the Greatwyrm wants to kill the party, they're going to have easy pickings (and auto-crits on their attacks).

Thus, this feels like one of those creatures you've got to have a really good plan for - and ensure you approach it from multiple angles so you don't all get hit by that breath from the start.

Chromatic Greatwyrms:

Despite having a higher Con modifier than Metallics, Chromatics have less health because they have fewer hit dice. Their AC and speeds are the same, along with condition and damage immunities. However, they do have a weakpoint which is Intelligence saving throws, to which they get a mere +5 (the rest are all at least +10). They start with 533 HP and reset to 425 when they go Mythic, putting them at less than 1000 HP overall, though still more than the Tarrasque.

The Chromatic's attacks are familiar, and do identical damage to the Metallic's with the same bonus to hit.

They only have their one Breath Weapon, which is a DC 26 Dexterity save and deals 78 (average) damage in a 300 foot cone. This is less damage (though not by a ton) though I will note that unless you have some means to push a saving throw or your Dexterity higher than normally possible, no one without proficiency in Dexterity saving throws has a chance of succeeding on this.

Still, compared to the Metallic Greatwyrm, I think we're looking at much more of a straight damage-dealer. Nothing here really debilitates the party without knocking them out from damage. They are of course fast and have a lot of HP, so I think the usual strong dragon strategy of flying away from the party and only turning around when you get your breath weapon back (and then using it from as far away as possible) is probably the best option, but I could easily imagine a clever party finding a way to lock one of these down and deal with it swiftly. There's nothing here as devastating as the Sapping Breath.

Gem Greatwyrms:

One of the interesting things here is that their damage immunity and breath weapon are going to be a more unusual damage type. An Amethyst Greatwyrm is going to infuriate the party's Warlock, and a Crystal Greatwyrm is going to make a Paladin far less effective.

Defensively, we're looking at slightly lower AC, with just 21. Their HP is an average of 507, with a reset to 400 at the mythic transition. Saving Throws are also notably a little less intense - no +18s or +19s, and a few with a "mere" +10 or +9 - so Dex, Strength, and Intelligence saving throws are - by the other Greatwyrms' standards - pretty low.

Notably, though, because Crystal Dragons hover, they're immune to the prone condition - which might not come up a lot, but it does mean that attempts to ground the Greatwyrm could be a lot tougher, which genuinely makes for a more difficult fight, potentially.

On the offense, their attacks have a +17 to hit - again, this will probably hit almost all the time, though it's getting a bit more possible for it to miss. The total damage of its bite and claw attacks come to 54 - oddly very slightly higher than the others, though I think the lower hit chance would probably eliminate that bonus.

Their breath weapon requires a DC 25 Dexterity saving throw and does 71 damage - but it also knocks foes who fail it prone, which, if nothing else, will likely slow the party's ability to reposition themselves (and opens them up to more likely crits from legendary claw attacks).

Interestingly, Gem Greatwyrms don't get Mythic Actions to use as Legendary Actions, but instead get a new option they can use once per short rest - which is Mass Telekinesis. This requires basically the whole party to make a DC 26 Strength saving throw or be restrained, lifted up by the telekinesis. Once lifted, the dragon can move the creatures around and automatically deal 45 force damage to them at the end of each turn. The creature can repeat their save at the end of each turn, but the greatwyrm also gets to move them up to 60 feet per round, so there might be some fall damage there too.

Also, Gem Greatwyrms get psionic spellcasting with one cast per day of each dispel magic, forcecage, planeshift, reverse gravity, and time stop.

So, even though the Gem Greatwyrm is the "weakest" in terms of its defensive abilities and damage output, I think that the spells it gets and in particular its Mass Telekinesis give it the potential to be a really profound danger to the party.

    All in all, I find it interesting that the Chromatic Greatwyrms, which seem the most likely to wind up as big bads of a campaign, actually seem the least threatening to a party. The CR makes sense as a product of their defenses and damage output, but they seem the type of monster that is very "solvable" by a high-level party with lots of spells and abilities.

    The Gem Greatwyrm looked a little flimsy at first, but I think it's got some strong tools to terrify your players. But the Metallic Greatwyrm's Sapping Breath is, I think, the ability that makes them utterly insane.

Looking at the Aspects of Bahamut and Tiamat

 If you're a DM, you likely often ask yourself what kind of stat block you'd want to use for your final boss. 5th Edition is filled with demon lords and archdevils and such, but it can be a delicate thing to make these monsters feel like a real, significant threat without just utterly annihilating the party.

5th Edition uses the Challenge Rating or "CR" system to give DMs a sense of how dangerous a monster is, with formulas on how to build a challenging but surmountable encounter. In my experience, the system works... all right. Specifically, the encounter-building system from Xanathar's Guide to Everything is a lot more easy to use than the one in the DMG. But, more specifically, it's much more of an art than a science.

One thing I think is important to note is that player characters certainly do gain more damage potential as they level up, but the real power they get is more HP and more resources. At level 2, if an Ogre lands a critical hit against you, there's a good chance you're down. And at level 2, the Cleric in your party only has three spell slots, so healing you up means only two other times they can heal anyone for that day.

As you get to higher levels, though, such a thing can be trivial. A Stone Golem, which is CR 10 to an Ogre's 2, would deal about 33 damage on a critical hit, if the party is level 10, then even a Wizard with only, say, +2 to Constitution would likely have about 62 HP, meaning that that crit would only take off a little over half their health, and the Cleric is going to have fifteen spell slots, making the situation far less dire, even though the proportional threats are the same. (By the Xanathar's rules, a monster of CR equal to the party's character level is counted as an appropriate challenge for six party members).

The point is: in my experience, low-level play can often involve few combat encounters in a day - there are so few resources (including HP) for the party to expend fighting them that each combat requires them to go all out. But when you get to higher levels, any group can blast down some serious threats with ease if they have all their resources. So, even someone like the demon lord Yeenoghu can be taken down fairly easily.

But then, most boss monsters, even those slated as campaign bosses, are often in the mid 20s in terms of CR. In the Monster Manual, there's only one monster that hits CR 30, which is the Tarrasque. The Tarrasque is mainly dangerous because it puts out an enormous amount of damage and has a lot of HP, and, I'd say, its biggest advantage is its Reflective Carapace, which makes any spell attacks or line-spells automatically fail against it (sorry Warlocks). Still, while I've never run an encounter with the Tarrasque, I've heard it's not actually that scary - if you can fly above it and pelt it with arrows or area-effect spells that don't do fire damage but do require a dexterity save and aren't line spells (which is, admittedly, not a ton) you can kill it with relative impunity (at least until the DM has it pick up a massive piece of rubble and throw it at the party - which isn't a specifically delineated action they have but seems fitting).

The only other CR 30 monster printed in 5th Edition until recently was Tiamat from Rise of Tiamat. This was a kind of special boss to be fought under special circumstances, with a lot of magic items and such to allow the party a chance against her, and is just to get her shoved back into the Nine Hells.

However, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons did something I think is a clever way to approach stat blocks for gods. Gods are, you know, immortal. You might slay a demon lord in the Abyss and kill it forever (though they have ways around that,) but gods are a whole other level, and kind of untouchable. As such, I think it's clever that Fizban's gives us not stat blocks for the gods themselves, but for Aspects of them.

In interpret this as essentially being Avatars - i.e., a kind of projection of the god that is fit to be seen by and interact with mortals. And because an avatar is sort of the god producing a physical form to control in the presence of mortals, it makes sense that that physical form is not indestructible. So, honestly, I think it would be cool if we saw more Aspects/Avatars of other famous D&D gods - though Bahamut and Tiamat, being perhaps the most ubiquitous across multiple worlds, are good ones to start with.

Phew, ok, let's get on with this and look at the actual stats.

Both are similar - the same CR and built as dragons, with breath weapons and the usual damage immunities, but unlike most dragons, they do have immunity to nonmagical weapons (though their own weapon attacks are nonmagical).

Let's look at the 5-headed queen first.

First off, let's look at Tiamat's defenses.

She has an AC of 23 - which is honestly not terribly hard to hit for a high-level player. She has 574 HP, but that's a bit misleading, because she has a Mythic mode called Chromatic Wrath which resets her HP to 500 (notably, she doesn't heal to 500, so no skipping this with something like Chill Touch). She thus effectively has 1074 HP, which is significantly more than the Tarrasque (mythic monsters also give double XP, meaning she's worth 310,000 XP total, so if you're not at level 20 by the time you fight her, there's a good chance you're going to hit it).

She has immunities to all the damage types chromatic dragons can breathe, along with nonmagical weapons (which is unusual for dragons - this also means that other dragons will have a very hard time damaging her, other than gem dragons). She's got some strong saving throws - the lowest is Intelligence, with a mere +5, but the next lowest is Strength with +10, and her Con save is +19. This last is notable because without any magical way of boosting saving throw DCs, the highest a player can push their spell save DCs is 19, meaning that she will never fail on a Con save, effectively.

So, in comparison with the Tarrasque, she has a lower AC, but she effectively has more health thanks to her mythic mode, and her saving throws are generally a lot better. And with immunity to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and poison, you're going to need to dip into some less common damage types anyway (beside magical BPS).

Let's also not forget that she can fly at 120 feet per round, so unlike the Tarrasque, which you can sort of cheese, she's going to be coming for you whether you're on the ground or in an airship (she also has a swim speed - though interestingly does not have amphibious, so I think you could rule that her breath weapon can't be used without her starting to drown, technically. Though I feel like that's more of an oversight, and she should have a black dragon's amphibiousness).

Now, what about damage output?

Her multiattack involves three attacks - one bite, one claw, and one tail. These each have a +19 to hit, meaning that even a really buffed-up character like an Eldritch Knight using the Shield Spell is going to have a hard time not getting hit with that. The total average damage for all three is 86 - which is not, like, insignificant, but also not that crazy given the CR we're looking at. (Consider that a CR 16 Marilith demon deals an average of 106 damage per round if its attacks all hit - which is admittedly less likely with only a +9).

Her breath attack has a DC 27 Dex save, which is high enough that plenty of characters will simply be incapable of ever succeeding. This is also a 300-foot cone, which is enormous - and basically means you can't get beyond it - your best bet is just spreading around her so that it hits as few members of the party as possible. The damage, though, is relatively modest at 71. For comparison, a Chromatic Greatwyrm's breath does 78 damage, and an ancient red dragon's does 91. So, Tiamat's breath is bigger, but not as powerful, which is interesting.

Rather than going into all of her other abilities and legendary actions, I think I see what makes her so fearsome - while she's doing 20 less damage with a breath than an ancient red dragon, she also has nearly twice as much effective health, and her saving throw bonuses are better, and she has way more in the way of damage and condition immunities.

What we're looking at, then, is a tank. 71 versus 91 damage on a breath weapon is a big deal, but for most characters, in both cases, two of these will take you down, making the red dragon's extra damage less significant (though high-HP characters might take 3 of the former, so it's not totally insignificant).

I think the far bigger deal is that parties are going to have a much harder time burning down Tiamat's HP, and those extra rounds of survival mean more chances to recharge that breath and land those powerful blows against the party.

Let's look at Bahamut.

In terms of defense, Bahamut actually has slightly higher HP (though only a little.) He has the same AC, and swaps immunity to poison for immunity to radiant damage - which I'd argue is more common among player characters (for one thing, a Paladin's divine smites against him are useless). In terms of saving throws, Bahamut is a little more vulnerable given that he has only a +4 to Dexterity saves, but everything else is in the double digits - in fact, he has +18s to Con and Wisdom saves and +19 to Charisma saves, which again means that without some artificial boost to saving throw DCs, he's going to auto-save against any player's spells that call upon those saving throws.

Bahamut's attacks are very similar, again with +19 to hit and dealing an average of 89 damage if all three connect - so slightly more than his sister.

Bahamut has two breath weapon options. His damaging "Platinum" breath is another 300-foot cone, but this only does 66 damage and its DC is a "mere" 26. This is objectively less powerful than Tiamat's breath, though it's still a dangerous one.

However, the other breath weapon is where things get insane. Exalting Breath heals for as much as Tiamat's deals damage, in that same 300-foot cone. But furthermore, it also revives any creature that's been dead for an hour or less within it, restoring all of its hit points. And that means that this might wind up doing a lot more than 71 points of healing.

Consider, for example, that in the lore of the game, Bahamut often travels in humanoid form with seven canaries who are actually shapechanged ancient gold dragons. If he has them with him, even if those dragons go down, he can pop them right back up.

So, even if Bahamut falls behind slightly (though really only slightly) in terms of damage, I think this ability potentially makes him the far more epic challenge.

Given that he's also the lawful good, benevolent dragon god, I think that it's far less likely that the party would fight him.

Indeed, I think a good use for these stat blocks would actually be to be a manifestation of Divine Intervention when used by a Cleric. If you're a Cleric of Bahamut, and you call upon the Platinum Dragon for aid, I'd consider as a DM having the Aspect of Bahamut appear - for 1 round. Have him use his exalting breath on the party and then use his legendary actions over the course of that round, and chances are the party is going to be in much better shape.

I do think it's actually probably good design to focus on the defensive aspects of their high CR. I've heard high-level D&D described as "rocket tag," where players can "nova" for astounding amounts of damage and thus the monsters have to be able to do likewise. But I think instead making massive bosses that are resilient to such nova'ing and thus force the players to endure their attacks more might make for a more dynamic strategy.

But again, I'd have to see it in practice.

The Makings of a Good Subclass

 One of the major and most exciting ways that 5th Edition has expanded player options has been the creation of new subclasses. For instance, the classes with the fewest subclasses, apart from the Artificer, which was introduced years after the premiere of the edition, the Druid and Sorcerer, have seen their options more than triple, from two in the Player's Handbook to now seven each.

To a large extent, I think that the later subclasses have often been bigger successes than the older ones. This shouldn't be surprising - when the PHB subclasses were first released, the edition had only seen pre-release playtesting. I think in many cases the designers were over-conservative with features, and while a few really knocked it out of the park (like the Battle Master Fighter) others had some serious design problems (like the Assassin Rogue, who has two of its four subclass features give you something that in theory any character could do anyway).

As I've said, I think a lot of the newer subclasses have been bigger successes, though there are some let-downs. Most recently, I think a lot of people felt the Way of the Ascendant Dragon Monk from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons fell flat, though if we're going for Monk subclasses, I think the Way of the Astral Self is peak "this seems awesome but is deeply flawed in practice."

I've certainly not played all the subclasses in the game - I shudder to think of someone who has played every one of them across multiple levels of a campaign, given how many there are. And I'm always eager to try something new. But I think there are certain ideas that can make for a strong subclass.

Power:

Naturally, this is the first one. Even if you're a really RP-focused player, I think very few people play D&D without wanting at least a bit of a power fantasy. You want to feel cool and effective and kill the monsters.

Power is not the easiest thing to assess, though you can sometimes calculate things based on average rolls and math. I think it's a credit to the game design that this sort of practice gets extremely complicated, where one class or subclass can be very effective against big groups of low-armor monsters while another will outperform it against a single big boss.

But it can be clear sometimes that one subclass has more easily-used, broadly-applicable, and individually powerful abilities. As an example, a Genie Warlock will deal a little more damage each turn than a Great Old One Warlock thanks to Genie's Wrath - GOOlocks don't get any equivalent damage boost.

Flavor:

This is actually entirely divorced from power, but I think a good subclass should have a strong flavor to it. This is sometimes easier to achieve in some classes than it is in others. For instance, a Champion Fighter and a Battle Master Fighter are both going to be masters-of-arms. I think the latter does distinguish itself a bit more in tone.

One instance where there's a big divide in flavor quality versus mechanical quality is the Hexblade Warlock. The mechanics are amazing (in fact, a bit too amazing, as they become the only real good choice when going Pact of the Blade) but I find it's also very rare for anyone to actually buy into the official flavor of the Warlock patron - that it's a sentient weapon like Blackrazor or the Sword of Kas. Indeed, I think a lot of people treat "Hexblade" as a descriptor of the Warlock rather than their patron, and cut out that definitional element to the Warlock class, instead flavoring it as more of a dark paladin or eldritch knight.

Mechanical Building:

I find that, often, the strongest subclasses introduce a mechanical concept when you take it whenever your class picks subclasses, and then that mechanic gets improved with the subsequent subclass features. The Battle Master is a great example of this: most of your subclass features merely allow you to choose additional maneuvers to learn and then give you either more superiority dice or make those dice a bigger one (eventually upgrading to d12s). The Armorer Artificer does this as well, if a little less tightly focused on individual abilities. Instead, it makes the Arcane Armor you have more effective.

Now, this isn't a hard and fast rule. The Clockwork Soul Sorcerer, which I think is generally regarded as a strong subclass, has no real interaction between its subclass features, but they collectively make for a pretty compelling option.

Likewise, sometimes sticking to a theme doesn't work out so well. The Way of the Astral Self Monk is all about building up this "astral self" that makes you far more powerful in combat, but because every subclass feature requires you to spend ki (that you might prefer to spend on, say, Flurry of Blows or Stunning Strike) you undercut the power of the subclass because by the time you have your whole thing set up, you've drained a significant portion of your most important resource.

Still, regardless of power, I think that this idea of building on mechanics introduced early on is also just more satisfying.

    We don't have much in the way of details about the 2024 Core Rulebooks - they're still two years off (and probably a bit more, given how early in 2022 we are. I'd guess these would probably be planned to release in the fall) and we are likely to see several more books between now and then.

I'm very curious to see how their design philosophy changes regarding this. It will, of course, be ten years since the release of 5th Edition by then. I've written before how I thought they could even wind up making the concept of Maneuvers and Superiority dice a base feature of the Fighter class, though that depends strongly on how conservative they are - they have said they want these books to be backwards compatible with all 5th Edition content, and I wonder what that would mean for all the Fighter subclasses printed in post-PHB sources. (For one thing, it might make some of them insanely powerful).

However, even at their most conservative, I expect that we'll see the PHB subclasses revisited in the same way we've seen with playable races and monsters in Monsters of the Multiverse. I'd be really excited if we saw some of the ideas that have worked out best over the past 8 years used to redesign the subclasses there (or even see some new, more compelling options put in the PHB).

And yes, I'll confess that a big part of this is hoping that the Great Old One Warlock gets an almost total "back to the drawing board" redesign, as I think its mechanics are among the weakest of the Warlock subclasses, and if I ever get to really play my original character in an ongoing campaign, I'd like him to be good.